Overwatch already has more than seven million players

Blizzard announced today that its online FPS Overwatch has already racked up more than seven million players. That's a good bit short of the 9.7 million people who took part in the beta, but the beta was free—and Overwatch has only been out for a little over a week.

“Over the months and weeks leading up to release we saw a lot of love and support for Overwatch—from Blizzard gamers, FPS fans, and people who’d never picked up a game like this before—and we’re very grateful for everyone’s incredible passion and enthusiasm,” Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said. “We poured a lot of effort into creating a game—and a new universe—that anyone could enjoy. We’re ecstatic to have had such a successful launch, and we’re looking forward to all of the fun, competition, and new content still to come.”

A few other interesting statistics of note: Overwatch players have sunk more than 119 million hours into the game since it came out, swapped heroes 326 million times, and delivered 11 million payloads to their destinations. We scored it 88/100 in our review, calling it “a great, occasionally fantastic shooter... filled with fresh, clever design decisions,” and its Metacritic aggregate is even higher. As numbers go, those are all very good indeed.

Speaking of Overwatch, there was some confusion yesterday about when the Competitive mode will be returned to the game, but when all was said and done it turned out that nothing had actually changed: Blizzard is still aiming to get it in near the end of June. We've also got a cool breakdown of the hidden lore of Overwatch's maps that you can dig into right here.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.